You may not be familiar with the term “sauropod”, but you almost certainly know the kind of dinosaur: the large, long-necked, enormous animals have become a staple of pop culture, from children’s toys to movies like “Jurassic Park”. “The ranks of sauropods contain brontosaurus, brachiosaurus and apatosaurus, and have long tails and matching necks, trunk-like legs and small heads compared to the rest of their bodies.
Within this broader class of massive dinosaurs, there is a subgroup called titanosaurs. It has dinosaurs like the Patagotitan, the Notocolossus, the Puertasaurus and the Argentinosaurus. And the sex of titanosaurs has only gotten a little longer: According to a new study, a newly discovered species has become the oldest titanosaurus in existence.
This newly analyzed titanosaurus has been christened ninjatitan zapatai, named after Sebastian Apesteguia, an Argentine paleontologist nicknamed “The Ninja”, as well as the technician Rogelio Zapata. It was discovered in 2014 by researchers in the southwestern Argentine province of Neuquen and is thought to be circulating in the area known as Patagonia about 140 million years ago.
The age of the dinosaur and the recovery of the fossil are remarkable. It was previously believed that titanosaurs lived around the middle and end of the Cretaceous period – until the extinction of the Cretaceous – Paleogene 66 million years ago, which presumably occurred after an asteroid hit the planet – but this discovery places them approach. to the beginning of the Cretaceous. And, as the co-author of the study and the paleontologist of Maimonides University, dr. Pablo Ariel Gallina put it this way: fossils that go back so far are ‘really very rare’.
“The most important thing about Ninjatitan zapatai, apart from the fact that it is a new species of titanosaurus, is that it is the earliest record worldwide for this group,” Dr Gallina said in a statement. “This discovery is also very important for the knowledge of the evolutionary history of sauropods, because the fossil records of the early Cretaceous, about 140 million years ago, are really very rare around the world.”
The dinosaur is believed to have been about 65 feet long, based on the remains discovered. The findings were classified as postcranial, meaning that scientists discovered other parts of the skeleton than the skull. Like other sauropods, titanosaurs like ninjatitan zapatai It is believed that they ate plants and were possibly one of the largest animals that ever walked the earth.
This is not the first big news about titanosaurs to appear since the beginning of 2021. In January, paleontologists in Argentina discovered bones that they said were possibly the largest titanosaurus of all time. They based this conclusion on the size and proportions of his pelvic bones and vertebrae, which suggested that it could surpass the Patagotitan as the largest dinosaur to date.
“This new specimen comes from a younger age than Patagotitan,” said Dr. Alejandro Otero, a paleontologist from the Argentine Museo de La Plata, who was involved in the investigation into the discovery, told Salon at the time. He added that “the specimen here reported that the largest and medium-sized titanosaurs ‘together with smaller sauropods known as rebbachisaurids’ existed ‘, at the beginning of the Cretaceous in Neuquén province.’